Soulbound
by 3000-Calorie diet
Summary: On the fateful night in the shack on the rock, Harry's induction into the Wizarding world was far more than a simple letter. AU


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Prologue: Awakening

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Three minutes to go. 'Three minutes till my birthday,' thought Harry drearily. Not that he had much to celebrate, after all.

Glancing around from his spot on the grime-encrusted floor, Harry took in the details of his surroundings. The room was devoid of any color. Spots of slime coated the walls, which seemed to be decaying quite rapidly. The smell of old mildew permeated the residence. On a moth-eaten couch with questionable stains sat his Aunt Petunia and his whale of a cousin, Dudley Dursley. Leaning against the half-crumbled fireplace was his Uncle Vernon, shotgun in hand, looking quite pleased with himself.

Two minutes. Harry sighed quietly. This was probably the craziest thing that his uncle had ever done before. Mulling over some of the more colorful moments in his life, he found this thought to be true to a certain degree. There was that one time when his relatives blamed him for making Dudley smell like he had been dumped in a vat of perfume. Even though there was no way he could have done such a thing, he was punished with a solid spanking. It wasn't too bad though. 'It's not like I suffered excessive head trauma, broken appendages, an impaled eyeball, asphyxiation, or any sexual abuse. Wait, where could THAT thought have come from?' Harry snickered. If such a thing had indeed happened, his teachers would have notified child services in a heartbeat, and the Dursleys were perfectly content to live on as normally as possible, which included avoiding arrest.

One minute. However, just a few days ago had been the first time Harry witnessed his uncle looking at him with genuine fear in his eyes. Harry knew it had something to do with the letter addressed to him, to Mr. H. Potter, the cupboard under the stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. There was something special, something life-changing, about that letter. Harry knew it. If only he had not stupidly shown that letter to Vernon. If only he had managed to snatch one of those letters from the veritable storm of letters that the fireplace spit out. If only...

BOOM.

The flimsy shack shook dangerously. All the members in the room jumped. Dudley clutched at Aunt Petunia in fear, his aunt looking wide-eyed at the door with fear herself.

WHAM.

Uncle Vernon gripped the shotgun, his knuckles white as he tensed up like an overgrown grizzly bear ready for the kill. "Who's there?" he shouted over the din of rain and lightning. "Leave us alone! I'm warning you, I'm arm..."

WHABOOM!

A silhouette of a gigantic man filled the doorway. His hair was wild and untamed, his beard all over the place. The pair of bright black eyes crinkled as he saw Harry

"Harry!" the giant's voice boomed out with joy. "Last time I saw yeh, you was just a baby. Ye look just like yer dad, but yer eyes, they just like yer..."

"Get out!" snarled Vernon, who was clearly trembling before the figure that dwarfed him. "You have no right to barge in just like that! Who do you think you are?"

"People call me Hagrid. I'm Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts, yeh know," smiled Hagrid, unfazed by the shaking gun in Vernon's hands. "I'm here to deliver a letter to lil' Harry here." He handed Harry the bit of post that Harry had dreamt about so often as of late.

"Go on, open it," Hagrid urged.

Harry eagerly tore open the envelope and quickly scanned the letter inside. He was still afraid that his uncle would come out of his stupor and rip the letter to shreds at any time. As he read more and more, an increasing sense of elation took over his body.

"I-I'm a wizard?" Harry muttered. In a way, it made perfect sense. All those times when weird stuff happened around him, it was because he used his power to make it so. This realization brought on a feeling that Harry had never experienced before; he felt _powerful_, and to his surprise, he found that he enjoyed it immensely.

"Not another word!" screamed Vernon, overpowering the giant's voice. His face reddened until it was colored puce. "I won't have any of your..._abnomal _kind around. This is your last warning. GET OUT!"

"Ah, shut it, ye great oaf," Hagrid barked as he reached over to twist the shotgun out of Vernon's grasp.

A single shot echoed through the room.

Silence fell. All that could be heard was the pitter-patter of the raindrops outside. A flower of red blossomed on the giant's shirt as the towering figure slowly fell over with a dull thud, dead.

"Y-you killed him..." gasped Petunia, holding her son, who had fainted at the gruesome sight. "Vernon, what have you done? If their people find out, they'll..."

Vernon let out a maddening chuckle. "I've prepared something just for the occasion! I thought something like this would happen."

He pulled out a briefcase from behind the sofa and opened it. Inside were a set of keys and stacks of American dollars in denominations of hundreds.

"612 Sunset Avenue, California, here we come!"

"Well, looks like this will be the last time we see each other, _boy_!" said Vernon gleefully as he snapped the briefcase shut. "Now that you know you're one of _them_, there is no need for us to be involved! Boy, are you even listening to me?"

Harry's eyes were glazed over, seemingly unaware of the world around him. His entire face was slack and void of expression, and his jaw hung slightly open. Other than the random splotches of red blood that adorned his face, it was deathly pale.

"Now you listen to me when I'm speaking to you, boy..."

"Vernon," Petunia whispered in a trembling voice, "lets just leave and be done with this..."

"Nonsense, dear," Vernon replied haughtily. "I should do one last thing for the brat and teach him some manners." He turned to the said boy. "Now listen here! When your better is spea-"

All of a sudden, Harry let out a light laugh. Vernon and Petunia shuddered. Harry had never laughed like that before. Something was off. He brought an arm across his lowered countance to wipe away the blood. He stopped laughing.

"My better?" he said coldly. "Nobody is my better, least of all a mudblood."

Harry slowly raised his head and met eyes with his relatives. Petunia let out a shriek as she saw what had replaced the bright green eyes of the youth. Vernon stumbled backwards as he raised the firearm once more.

"W-who are you?" Vernon stuttered in fear.

"Ah, it seems that I will be the one to teach you some manners, _Uncle_. You should properly introduce yourself before asking the names of others," mocked Harry's figure. "I will have to thank you though. That cold-blooded murder was just what I needed to awaken and overcome that pesky protection."

"Y-you..."

"Your reward shall be a quick and painless death."

Harry started advancing on the trembling couple.

"Stay back! Don't come any closer!" Vernon screamed as he fired a few shots, yet to no avail. The bullets simply could not find their target, impaling the crumbling wall behind it instead.

Harry smirked as he casually strolled closer to the couple. The deaths of these people would be the first stepping stones to retaining his former glory. As he prepared to strike down the insolent mudbloods, a sharp pain ran through him, reminiscent of that one time...

'No, this cannot be!'

Harry doubled over as painful, blinding light exuded from his figure.

"_Stand aside, you silly girl!" Voldemort shrieked at the red-haired woman in front of him. _

_The woman was garbed in pure white and stood in front of a small boy, who was curled up in fetal position. Arms loose to the sides and face smiling, she radiated a serene beauty. Her green eyes gleamed with an unintelligible emotion to the figure in front of her, a young man dressed in black gripping a pale wooden stick. _

_The young man glared at the angelic figure in hate. "I will finish what I could not eleven years ago."_

_Gathering all his hate, he prepared to deliver the final blow. All of a sudden, he felt an immense pressure that he had never experienced before forcing him onto his knees. He screamed as his fingertips and wand slowly dissolved. _

"_W-what is this magic?"_

_As he lay panting on the ground, his wand arm disintegrated along with his wand. It was then he knew that he could not win. He could not win against this magic that he had no knowledge of. But..._

_Voldemort smiled cruelly at the unfazed woman in front of him. "I admit defeat," he sighed as the rest of his consciousness began dissolving. "However, allow me give your son payment for the eleven years I have taken up residence in his body!" He held up what was left of his arms toward the defenseless child and smirked. Perhaps this could play out to his benefit after all. "Pitiful child, I will grant you this part of my soul, unfettered with my consciousness. This is my gift to you. Live on, and come to realize the darkness within the hearts of humans!"_

_The woman frowned as she witnessed the transference of the neutral soul fragment. Such a phenomenon was not natural, but there was little she could do to stop magic that wasn't intended to harm its recipient. _

When Harry came to, he was lying on the ground with a bit of parchment in one hand. Wondering where he was, he stumbled as he tried to stand. He rubbed his eyes and looked around his surroundings. In an instant, his memories flooded back. His uncle taking them out to this isolated hellhole, the murder of the man called Hagrid, the _unbearable_ pain...

But where had everything gone? Nothing indicated that a building had ever been here, nor any other people other than himself. His legs gave out as he hit the tightly packed dirt on his knees.

'What should I do?' thought Harry in a panic. He was freezing and starving, and there was no way to get back to the mainland other than to swim.

Although the thunder had passed, the rain pelted down even harder. Harry hugged himself in an pointless effort to ward off the chill that had so thoroughly permeated his body. Clutching the sopping, unintelligible Hogwarts letter to his chest, he half-cried and half-murmured to himself the only thing that could give comfort to an estranged child who had never known love

"I am a wizard, I am a wizard, I am a wizard..."

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Author's Note: Hi all! The project that I have embarked on will probably turn out to be a novel-length fic. This idea was taken from a fic that's based on a string of one-shots on how certain character deaths would affect the HP universe. I forgot the name and author of the fic, so if anyone finds this familiar, please let me know so I can give credit where it is due. Please read and review!


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